


brother and sister

by mormegil



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Poisoning, Sibling Incest, could be read as both of them/omc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6615487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mormegil/pseuds/mormegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Cesare's rivals insults Lucrezia. There are consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brother and sister

**Author's Note:**

> behold my pseudo vampiric incestuous history wank/attempt at gothic fiction  
> Sforza isn't a real person or based on a real person; mostly used the name because the family was reasonably prolific and probably could have had another kid.  
> Set shortly after he ditches the cardinalate.

He loved his sister, no one could deny that, loved her more than money, more than land or honor or jewels, loved her enough to damn their whole line at a word from her. His rival had done ill to insult her.  
Lucrezia was lovely, pale as death against her black velvet, but strangely vivacious, laughing louder than her more genuinely innocent maids, too loud. Some would have said she invited reprehensions. That smile never quite left her face. Her brother, too, lacked something in decorum; he played at being everyone’s dearest friend, or was drunk enough to feel that he was so in truth. Their guest supposed he could be grateful Borgia hadn’t stabbed anyone yet.  
And so it was that Sforza’s bastard found himself led out of the thick of the festivities by the Pope’s, lured by unspoken promises and his own sense of civility, apparently more acute than his host’s.  
One of the promises he had seen in Borgia’s awful smirk was immediately fulfilled; the dark corner the man had dragged him to was laden with wine and sugar. “Shall we drink, _mi caro_? To my sister?” said Borgia, offering a glass to Sforza.  
There was distrust written all over his face, and Borgia laughed wildly, threw his arm around Sforza, and swallowed the wine almost to the last dregs. He poured again from the same dark flagon, and Sforza drank as Lucrezia watched with fever in her pretty eyes. “Odd wine. Thick.” He slumped against Borgia’s proffered shoulder, overwhelming heat coursing downwards through his legs, his reservations forgotten in the warmth of alcohol. Borgia’s lips brushed against his ear as he whispered assurances of its provenance, and there was something strange in Lucrezia’s face for a moment, something that should have seemed darker than the unholy laughter of earlier. Sforza thought it rather suited her.  
“Come, come, retire with us. I would have my sister’s expertise on what we discussed,” and it seemed to Sforza that the duke’s hand lingered too long against his throat as he spoke. Nonetheless, he did not resist, allowing a stumbling, raucously affectionate Borgia to take his arm and lead him further into the passage. There seemed to be a chill lingering around the old stonework, something soaking up heat and sound. Sforza stared into the grim eyes of a portrait taking up half a wall, a portrait of-- _my God, this is blasphemy, he’s had himself painted as our lord, and in her house too_ \--and felt, against all reason, that it was laughing at him.  
Sforza did not know how long it took them. His mind was veiled from the world, a thin film separating him from all that passed around him, and he could not have guessed how many stairs they descended or how many doors passed. His captors seemed to know, or at least to have an idea of which room they meant to use, and Sforza, numb to his earlier fears, permitted himself submission.  
As the thick oak of the inner door to some private parlor slammed shut with a final shudder, the lady of the house curtsied, her eyes cast to Borgia beneath darkened lashes. The curve of her lips hardly spoke of humility, though.  
She shivered, and her brother dropped his prisoner ungraciously. “Lucrezia, my heart, are you cold? We can do it faster--” He was anxious for her; Sforza would laugh if the circumstances were other than they were. _A great lady, I’m sure she is, and needs her brother to keep her warm in her own halls._  
He waited with bated breath, eyes half-lidded, as Borgia clasped his silken mantellina around her bare shoulders and pressed wine-stained lips to his sister’s fair hair.  
“Wouldn’t do to have you uncomfortable for this, sister darling,” he could barely hear the man breathe into her ear, too close, closer than any man had the right to be to his sister. Sforza shivered in awful suspicion. The torchlight cast one shadow around the two of them, as if they had been one flesh, one body, not brother and sister--or whatever mockery of brother and sister they were.  
Their abomination made a pretty picture against the chamber’s rich hangings. The girl smiled at him, sweeter than she should be even able to pretend, and turned to the family degenerate again. “Oh, dear, Cesare, we seem to have forgotten our guest. Allow yourself rest, my lord. Sit where you like,” but she gestured to a silk-lined couch as she spoke.  
And the guest in question, enthralled by the hinted horrors of what he saw, allowed himself, too conscious that he might not rise again, to accept the uncertain menaces of whatever end they had selected for him.  
Borgia was faster than expected, even a drunken wreck as he was. Lucrezia, too, though her brother seemed to have pulled her with him by the waist. They were practically upon him, and Sforza surrendered to his fate. They said Lucrezia at least could kill sweetly if she wished.  
Borgia’s rings pressed into Sforza’s throat, the metal cold and smooth against his purpling skin. “So you’re going to kill me, then, Borgia? Such a pity,” said Sforza, too much enthralled by wine and Borgia’s hands around his neck to be much distraught. “I’m sure I can’t imagine why.”  
Lucrezia’s small pale hand brushed against his cheek, almost tenderly, and her voice was horribly soft as she turned to her monster of a brother. “Hardly, _my lord_. It was me you insulted, and it should be me that has the honor of avenging myself, wouldn’t you say, Cesare?”  
“Oh, yes, sister. She’s a Borgia as much as I am, you know. _Such_ a pity you didn’t realize,” he said, casting eyes on her with a look of such adoration that even Sforza’s alcohol-fogged, disoriented mind suspected he was intruding and, dimly shocked by the _implications_ , choked back a retch, and dark liquid (wine, Sforza hoped to God, but he began to suspect he knew not what) sloshed in the goblet in his hand as he extended it to her. The lady Borgia laughed lightly, leaned her rosy cheek against her brother’s dark-cloaked shoulder, drank deep, and plucked a small glass jar of what looked to be sugar from the lining of her sleeve.  
All her sweet laughter and pretense of innocence fell from her in an instant, and she looked a grown woman for once, her eyes cold as steel, angelic golden curls framing a face hard and bitter with worldly knowledge. The vision lasted only an instant; she was a smiling beauty queen again--or was it really more of a smirk?--as she emptied the phial into the remnants of their shared wine.  
Her brother, satisfied as to the unfortunate Sforza’s incapacity, allowed himself to sprawl backwards over the velvet cushions, his legs ungraciously draped over his sister and victim’s laps at once. The lady ran a jeweled hand too lovingly down his calf as she wet two disgustingly delicate fingers in liquid garnet fire, and the elder Borgia tried to make some comment about the river, about marks on corpses, but she held a hand up to silence him.  
“Oh, Cesare, Cesare, my love, you care too much for secrecy, he will be dead ere anyone but us sees him,” she almost cooed, leaning across the cushions to tip the drug down Sforza’s unresisting throat.  
He understood well enough what was happening-- _cantarella_ , it was whispered, a quick death, if not a pleasant one. It was oh, so easy to mistake for sugar, they said, all too easy to slip into food and drink.  
The chill he had felt before did not seem to penetrate to the Borgias’ cushioned apartments; the air was too warm against his skin, warm enough to drown the fire in his throat. He could almost have slept there, slept happily, even, so close to everything he had, sober and living, warred with and despised, the Borgia girl’s skin too soft and familiar against his own.  
His peace was interrupted by intangible hands beginning to tear at his throat from inside. He coughed futilely, unwillingly, trying to dislodge something that was not there. There was no true blockage, he knew, nothing he could do anymore. There was no air either. Forces he could not see or understand caressed his lungs, pressed down on them, and he flailed desperately as a hand--callused and gloved, probably Cesare’s, but he could hardly have said had he cared--covered his mouth.  
And as darkness pooled across the Sforza boy’s vision, the last sight his poor pernicious eyes were privy to was Cesare Borgia kissing his sister’s pretty laughing mouth as the body twitched and spasmed between them.


End file.
